Here there be Planeswalkers
Last weekend our Manaburst campaign finally got off the ground. The actual play portion of the night wasn't too long - we spent a lot of the session going over rules and took our time with the scenes to make sure that all of the rules were explained as we went. Slow-paced that it may be, the session seemed to be a success. By the end of the night everyone had gotten the basics of the system and were getting into the flexibility it afforded them.
Character generation was slow at first while everyone wrapped their head about the phases and aspects that FATE uses, but before long we had a fairly diverse group of planeswalkers who, for the most part, had a united enemy and had met each other in their travels-at least in passing.
Ada
Ada's original conception was that of a construct capable of aiding its master in research and ritual. She quickly became indispensable to his experiments, able to observe and record all that transpired while his concentration was elsewhere.
Many years after her creation, Ada was given sentience when a powerful spell cast by her master inadvertently bound a being of primordial magic within her shell. The reaction not only destroyed the ritual but also flung Ada from the plane, sending her careening through the Blind Eternities for the first time.
Concept of Magic: Flow of Aether
Manaburst Research – Trappings of Magic
Although I haven't been writing much about it, I've been making some notes on how I plan on using the Spirit of the Century system to run a Magic: the Gathering-inspired campaign for my group that I've previously mentioned. One of the unknowns I since the beginning is how to handle magic - a decision made harder since I really have no idea how magic works in MtG's Multiverse.
Sure, that card game has its mana-powered magic, but it's made for a turn-based card game and can be considered slower and less fluid than I'd like for our campaign. I still had two questions to answer before I could design my magic system: how exactly does one gain and spend Mana, and does summoning pull a preexisting creature to the summoner, or does it create a simulacrum. To answer these I decided to ask WotC directly... so to speak
Burstback: the Return of Manaburst
The members of my Saturday gaming group are all adults with busy lives so it's no surprise that most Saturdays at least one person winds up being late for our weekly session. Instead of starting our sessions early and having to catch people up, we've recently started breaking out some Magic decks and playing a few games to pass the time.
During one of our games a player mentioned that he thought a role-playing game set in a heavily Magic-inspired setting would be a lot of fun, but that playing beings like planeswalkers didn't seem like it would work. He was surprised when I replied that not only did I think it would work fine, I had done it before.
I'm not about to usurp the Earthdawn game we have running - I enjoy it too much. But with the interested around the table it seems like it might be time to break out my Manaburst notes and look at making some revisions. I've already started getting ideas on how to improve over our first attempt.
Renegade Horizon, the Rock Opera
A couple of weeks ago we wrapped up what was the current story arc in our Renegade Horizon game. It was a fun little campaign that ended with what our gamemaster described as a rock opera. It's really hard to explain how this running joke ran throughout the session without disrupting things but everything just added up to a very enjoyable game.
As far as the session itself, we wound up tracking down the baron that had placed a price on our heads and kidnapped him from the compound of the cult he was heading up. After some discussion as to how to force him to remove the bounty he had placed, the idea of a psychic re-education was brought up. So that's where we ended the campaign - as our characters were hiding out for a couple months re-writing the Baron's psyche in preparation for when we return to the campaign later.
For now the mantle of the gamemaster is being passed off to another player who's been prepping a SciFi game set in our solar system with an inhabitable Earth, no aliens, no "magic", and no interstellar travel. We've settled on a basic concept for now - residents of a space station that has recently been invaded and occupied by an unwelcome power who have to form an underground resistance to drive them off. A couple of the players have come up with basic character concepts but we'll be nailing down all the specifics at our next session. Should be fun!
Renegade Horizon Resumes Flight
Recently we had the unfortunate task of putting the Star Wars: The Twilight Path campaign to rest. It was just getting to be infinitely difficult to get everyone together for a game - with only the gamemaster and the three players in this campaign if one couldn't make the session we didn't feel we could go on without them. So after two months of failed attempts the gamemaster signed the death certificate.
However due to karma's attempt to balance itself out, we've finally been able to restart Renegade Horizon. There was a drought of gaming for a while due to scheduling conflicts for a few months where we didn't game at all, but now we're back, this time with a few minor changes.
Renegade Horizon!
Last Friday I finally got a chance to try out the Spirit of the Century rules in the first session of Renegade Horizon, a game set in our gamemaster's homebrew world of Aria, and really enjoyed it. The game mechanics for SotC have proven quick and simple but with a depth that both encourages and rewards creativity and narration. However none of us were overly interested in the default setting of SotC - we wanted a world of high action but without the pulpiness of giant gorillas flying biplanes.
Because of the genre-mashing involved, it's difficult to give a one-sentence summary of Aria. The closest RPG comparisons I can come up with would have to be Privateer Press's Iron Kingdoms, which they describe as Full Metal Fantasy, and Misguided Games' dieselpunk game Children of the Sun. A fantasy world at his heart, it does have some basic technology. The most advanced branch of science is aonics - the use of sigils and runes to bind minor "demons" to objects to create a specific effect. This new field has opened new avenues of technology such as limb replacement or airships. In addition men have learned that inscribing certain sigils onto themselves allows them access to a form of sorcery. However such sorcerers must constantly fight a losing battle against the bound demons for control and thus have been labeled heretics by the rest of the civilized world.
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